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Roark merely crowded the man even more.

The tips of my fingers prickled, like drawing too near a flame. Gold surrounded the blade of the knife in Haukur’s hand. Broken threads of craft gleamed in my sight. As though I stood half in the mirror and half not, as though Roark’s craft called to mine.

Was this the power of a sealed bond? When he summoned more of the darkness of Skul Drek, I wondered if I could drift between the hazy shadows much the same.

I went to Haukur’s other side. My palm covered the one he used to grip the hilt of his blade. The man shuddered and winced but managed to look down at me.

“I am glad so many folk use bones in their blades,” I said, low and rough.

Haukur whimpered when he watched me hold his curled fingers to the hilt. I would need to open his flesh to meld the bone of the knife to his hand, but the way he watched in horror, perhaps he could see the shine of my craft as well as me.

I spoke with a sweet sort of viciousness, never releasing his fingers. “Your prince seems to be showing you that he speaks well enough. I urge you to keep out of our way. I think I speak for us both when I say that we tire of sods like you who try to stop us. Now, do you wish the prince to keep speaking to you?”

Haukur shook his head swiftly.

“Would you like me to meld this blade to your hand, never to be removed lest you cut it off?”

Again he shook his head.

“Then let us pass.”

Another hand curled around the back of my neck, spinning me around. Roark’s lips were close to mine. I did not know he’d pulled back, too lost in my own furious exhaustion at those who continually cut at Roark’s sacrifice.

My husband grinned with such a twisted gleam I could nearly make out the reddish copper of Skul Drek in the gold. I think you made your point.

I faced Haukur. The man had slid down the wall to a crouch, the knife thrown on the ground.

I curled my fingers around Roark’s tunic. “If one more person speaks of you like you are some traitor, I think I will meld the bones in their necks as one.”

The way Roark looked at me, I wasn’t certain we would be making it to the queen. I thought he might whisk me from the hall at any moment and take up what we started last night again.

“Well that was frightening and entertaining.” Gunter clapped Roark on the shoulder. “But let us get this meet over with. It’s time to finally put this damn war against the melder to rest.”

18

Roark

There was a new sort of malice in Lyra. The way she threatened Haukur without a pause to consider that she stood inside a hall of Draven folk who did not trust her was reckless.

It was stunning.

I craved more of the shadows in her own eyes.

Haukur would not touch her. At times having a rent soul was a gift more than a curse. With my craft, the frigid bite of my broken soul could touch another. It could slice and draw out pain unseen.

Haukur knew what I was doing, trapping him in the frosted wastes for a moment, cutting at him again and again. But to have Lyra step closer was a move I did not anticipate. Her own craft scorched inside me in a way I’d not felt before, as though our magics had twisted together, a true weave.

I wanted more.

I wanted her.

The wicked, the sweet, the cruel, the fearful. All of it was a new venom in my blood that I hoped would poison me long after I met the gods.

“I don’t know where that came from,” Emi whispered to Lyra as we entered the council chamber, “but perhaps warn us before you try to meld a man. Gods, do you realize how many of the Dark Watch were in that hall?”

“I know.” Lyra nervously tugged on the ends of her hair. “I don’t know what came over me. I just…hate the words they say about Roark.”

“Nightlark, she’s woven to his soul,” Gunter explained in a rough whisper. “A soul meant to be cruel and wretched. Instincts are going to feel a little different for our melder from now on.”